Chapter 15

The Judge, however, in charging the jury was troubled by none of these hampering limitations of mind. He had always regarded the taking and discussion of evidence as a rather wearisome and windy business. All democracy was full of such wasteful and time-killing ways of coming to a conclusion. The boy was guilty. The powers who controlled the county had said he was guilty. Why spoil good time, then, quibbling.

He charged the jury that the girl's testimony was no more credible than that of a dozen other witnesses--which was quite true. All had told the truth as they understood it, and saw it. But he glided smoothly over the one important difference. The girl had seen the act. No other, not even the accused himself, had been able to say that.

He delivered an extemporaneous and daringly false lecture on the comparative force of evidence, intended only to befog the minds of the jurors. But the effect of it was exactly the opposite to that which he had intended, for, whereas they had up to now held a fairly clear view of the things that had been proven by the adroit handling of his facts by the District Attorney, they now forgot all that structure of guilt which he so laboriously built up and remembered only one thing clearly. And that thing was the story of Cynthe Cardinal.

Without leaving their seats, they intimated that they had come to an agreement.

The Judge, glowering dubiously at them, demanded to know what it was.

Jeffrey Whiting stood up.

The foreman rose and faced the Judge stubbornly, saying:

"Not guilty."

The Judge polled the jury, glaring fiercely at each man as his name was called, but one after another the men arose and answered gruffly for acquittal. The hill people rushed from the courthouse, running for their horses and shouting the verdict as they ran. Then sleepy little Danton awoke from its September drowse and was aware that something real had happened. The elaborate machinery of prosecution, the whole political power of the county, the mighty grip and pressure of the railroad power had all been set at nothing by the tragic little love story of an ignorant French girl from the hills.

Dardis led Jeffrey Whiting down from the place where he had been a prisoner and brought him to his mother.

Jeffrey turned a long searching gaze down into his mother's eyes as he stooped to kiss her. What he saw filled him with a bitterness that all the years of his life would not efface. What he saw was not the sprightly, cheery, capable woman who had been his mother, but a grey, trembling old woman, broken in body and heart, who clung to him fainting and crying weakly. What men had done to him, he could shake off. They had not hurt him. He could still defy them. But what they had done to his little mother, that would rankle and turn in his heart forever. He would never forgive them for the things they had done to her in these four weeks and in these two days.

And here at his elbow stood the one person who had to-day done more to hurt his mother and himself than any other in the world could have done. She could have told his mother weeks ago, and have saved her all that racking sorrow and anxiety. But no, for the sake of that religion of hers, for the sake of what some priest told her, she had stuck to what had turned out to be a useless lie, to save a dead man's name.

Ruth stood there reaching out her hands to him. But he turned upon her with a look of savage, fleering contempt; a look that stunned the girl as a blow in the face would have done. Then in a strange, hard voice he said brutally:

"You lied!"

Ruth dropped her eyes pitifully under the shock of his look and words. Even now she could not speak, could not appeal to his reason, could not tell him that she had heard nothing but what had come under the awful seal of the confessional. The secret was out. She had risked his life and lost his love to guard that secret, and now the world knew it. All the world could talk freely about what she had done except only herself. Even if she could have reached up and drawn his head down to her lips, even then she could not so much as whisper into his ear that he was right, or try to tell him why she had not been able to speak. She saw the secret standing forever between their two lives, unacknowledged, embittering both those lives, yet impassable as the line of death.

When she looked up, he was gone out to his freedom in the sunlight.

The hill people were jammed about the door and in the street as he came out. Twenty hands reached forward to grasp him, to draw him into the midst of their crowd, to mount him upon his own horse which they had caught wandering in the high hills and had brought down for him. They were happy, triumphant and loud, for them--the hill people were not much given to noise or demonstration. But under their triumph and their noise there was a current of haste and anxious eagerness which he was quick to notice.

During the weeks in jail, when his own fate had absorbed most of his waking moments, he had let slip from him the thought of the battle that yet must be waged in the hills. Now, among his people again, and once more their unquestioned leader, his mind went back with a click into the grooves in which it had been working so long. He pushed his horse forward and led the men at a gallop over the Racquette bridge and out toward the hills, the families who had come down from the nearer hills in wagons stringing along behind.

When they were well clear of the town, he halted and demanded the full news of the last four weeks.

It must not be forgotten that while this account of these happenings has been obliged to turn aside here and there, following the vicissitudes and doings of individuals, the railroad powers had never for a moment turned a step aside from the single, unemotional course upon which they had set out. Orders had gone out that the railroad must get title to the strip of hill country forty miles wide lying along the right of way. These orders must be executed. The titles must be gotten. Failures or successes here or there were of no account. The incidents made use of or the methods employed were of importance only as they contributed to the general result.

Jeffrey Whiting had blocked the plans once. That was nothing. There were other plans. The Shepherd of the North before the Senate committee had blocked another set of plans. That was merely an obstacle to be gone around. The railroad people had gone around it by procuring the burning of the country. The people, left homeless for the most part and well-nigh ruined, would be glad now to take anything they could get for their lands. There had been no vindictiveness, no animus on the part of the railroad. Its programme had been as impersonal and detached as the details in any business transaction. Certain aims were to be accomplished. The means were purely incidental.

Rogers, whom the railroad had first used as an agent and afterwards as an instrument, was now gone--a broken tool. Rafe Gadbeau, who had been Rogers' assistant, was gone--another broken tool. The fire had been used for its purpose. The fire was a thing of the past. Jeffrey Whiting had been put out of the way--definitely, the railroad had hoped. He was now free again to make difficulties. All these things were but changes and moves and temporary checks in the carrying through of the business. In the end the railroad must attain its end.

Jeffrey Whiting saw all these things as he sat his horse on the old Piercefield road and listened to what had been happening in the hills during the four weeks of his removal from the scene.

The fire, because it had seemed the end of all things to the people of the hills, had put out of their minds all thought of what the railroad would do next. Now they were realising that the railroad had moved right on about its purpose in the wake of the fire. It had learned instantly of Rogers' death and had instantly set to work to use that as a means of removing Jeffrey Whiting from its path. But that was only a side line of activity. It had gone right on with its main business. Other men had been sent at once into the hills with what seemed like liberal offers for six-month options on all the lands which the railroad coveted.

They had gotten hold of discouraged families who had not yet begun to rebuild. The offer of any little money was welcome to these. The whole people were disorganised and demoralised as a result of the scattering which the fire had forced upon them. They were not sure that it was worth while to rebuild in the hills. The fire had burned through the thin soil in many places so that the land would be useless for farming for many years to come. They had no leader, and the fact that Jeffrey Whiting was in jail charged with murder, and, as they heard, likely to be convicted, forced upon them the feeling that the railroad would win in the end. Where was the use to struggle against an enemy they could not see and who could not be hurt by anything they might do?

Jeffrey Whiting saw that the fight which had gone before, to keep the people in line and prevent them from signing enough options to suit the railroad's purpose, had been easy in comparison with the one that was now before him. The people were disheartened. They had begun to fear the mysterious, unassailable power of the railroad. It was an enemy of a kind to which their lives and training had not accustomed them. It struck in the dark, and no man's hand could be raised to punish. It hid itself behind an illusive veil of law and a bulwark of officials.

The people were for the large part still homeless. Many were still down in the villages, living upon neighbourhood kindness and the scant help of public charity. Only the comparative few who could obtain ready credit had been able even to begin rebuilding. If they were not roused to prodigious efforts at once, the winter would be upon them before the hills were resettled. And with the coming of the pinch of winter men would be ready to sell anything upon which they had a claim, for the mere privilege of living.

When they came up into the burnt country, the bitterness which had been boiling up in his heart through those weeks and which he had thought had risen to its full height during the scenes of to-day now ran over completely. His heart raved in an agony of impotent anger and a thirst for revenge. His life had been in danger. Gladly would he now put it ten times in danger for the power to strike one free, crushing blow at this insolent enemy. He would grapple with it, die with it only for the power to bring it to the ground with himself!

The others had become accustomed to the look of the country, but the full desolation of it broke upon his eyes now for the first time. The hills that should have glowed in their wonderful russets from the red sun going down in the west, were nothing but streaked ash heaps, where the rain had run down in gullies. The valleys between, where the autumn greens should have run deep and fresh, where snug homes should have stood, where happy people should now be living, were nothing but blackened hollows of destitution. From Bald Mountain, away up on the east, to far, low-lying Old Forge to the south, nothing but a circle of ashes. Ashes and bitterness in the mouth; dirt and ashes in the eye; misery and the food of hate in the heart!

Very late in the night they came to French Village. The people here were still practically living in the barrack which the Bishop had seen built, the women and children sleeping in it, the men finding what shelter they could in the new houses that were going up. There were enough of these latter to show that French Village would live again, for the notes which the Bishop had endorsed had carried credit and good faith to men who were judges of paper on which men's names were written and they had brought back supplies of all that was strictly needful.

Here was food and water for man and beast. Men roused themselves from sleep to cheer the young Whiting and to hobble the horses out and feed them. And shrill, voluminous women came forth to get food for the men and to wave hands and skillets wildly over the story of Cynthe Cardinal.

The mention of the girl's name brought things back to Jeffrey Whiting. Till now he had hardly given a thought to the girl who, by a terrible sacrifice of the man she loved, had saved him. He owed that girl a great deal. And the thought brought to his mind another girl. He struck himself viciously across the eyes as though he would crush the memory, and went out to tramp among the ashes till the dawn. His body had no need of rest, for the exercise he had taken to-day had merely served to throw off the lethargy of the jail; and sleep was beyond him.

At the first light he roused the hill men and told them what the night had told him. Unless they struck one desperate, destroying blow at the railroad, it would come up mile by mile and farm by farm and take from them the little that was left to them. They had been fools that they had not struck in the beginning when they had first found that they were being played falsely. If they had begun to fight in the early summer their homes would not have been burned and they would not be now facing the cold and hunger of an unsheltered, unprovided winter.

Why had they not struck? Because they were afraid? No. They had not struck because their fathers had taught them a fear and respect of the law. They had depended upon law. And here was law for them: the hills in ashes, their families scattered and going hungry!

If no man would go with him, he would ride alone down to the end of the rails and sell his life singly to drive back the work as far as he could, to rouse the hill people to fight for themselves and their own.

If ten men would come with him they could drive back the workmen for days, days in which the hill people would come rallying back into the hills to them. The people were giving up in despair because nothing was being done. Show them that even ten men were ready to fight for them and their rights and they would come trooping back, eager to fight and to hold their homes. There was yet wealth in the hills. If the railroad was willing to fight and to defy law and right to get it, were there not men in the hills who would fight for it because it was their own?

If fifty men would come with him they could destroy the railroad clear down below the line of the hills and put the work back for months. They would have sheriffs' posses out against them. They would have to fight with hired fighters that the railroad would bring up against them. In the end they would perhaps have to fight the State militia, but there were men among them, he shouted, who had fought more than militia. Would they not dare face it now for their homes and their people!

Some men would die. But some men always died, in every cause. And in the end the people of the whole State would judge the cause!

Would one man come? Would ten? Would fifty?

Seventy-two grim, sullen men looked over the knobs and valleys of ashes where their homes had been, took what food the French people could spare them, and mounted silently behind him.

Up over the ashes of Leyden road, past the cellars of the homes of many of them, for half the day they rode, saving every strain they could upon their horses. A three-hour rest. Then over the southern divide and down the slope they thundered to strike the railroad at Leavit's bridge.

IX

THE COMING OF THE SHEPHERD

The wires coming down from the north were flashing the railroad's call for help. A band of madmen had struck the end of the line at Leavit's Creek and had destroyed the half-finished bridge. They had raced down the line, driving the frightened labourers before them, tearing up the ties and making huge fires of them on which they threw the new rails, heating and twisting these beyond any hope of future usefulness.

Labourers, foremen and engineers of construction had fled literally for their lives. The men of the hills had no quarrel with them. They preferred not to injure them. But they were infuriated men with their wrongs fresh in mind and with deadly hunting rifles in hand. The workmen on the line needed no second warning. They would take no chances with an enemy of this kind. They were used to violence and rioting in their own labour troubles, but this was different. This was war. They threw themselves headlong upon handcars and work engines and bolted down the line, carrying panic before them.

In a single night the hill men with Jeffrey Whiting at their head had ridden down and destroyed nearly twenty miles of very costly construction work. There were yet thirty miles of the line left in the hills and if the men were not stopped they would not leave a single rail in all the hill country where they were masters.

The call of the railroad was at first frantic with panic and fright. That was while little men who had lost their wits were nominally in charge of a situation in which nobody knew what to do. Then suddenly the tone of the railroad's call changed. Big men, used to meeting all sorts of things quickly and efficiently, had taken hold. They had the telegraph lines of the State in their hands. There was no more frightened appeal. Orders were snapped over the wires to sheriffs in Adirondack and Tupper and Alexander counties. They were told to swear in as many deputies as they could lead. They were to forget the consideration of expense. The railroad would pay and feed the men. They were to think of nothing but to get the greatest possible number of fighting men upon the line at once.

Then a single great man, a man who sat in a great office building in New York and held his hand upon every activity in the State, saw the gravity of the business in the hills and put himself to work upon it. He took no half measures. He had no faith in little local authorities, who would be bound to sympathise somewhat with the hill people in this battle.

He called the Governor of the State from Albany to his office. He ordered the Governor to turn out the State's armed forces and set them in motion toward the hills. He wondered autocratically that the Governor had not had the sense to do this of himself. The Governor bridled and hesitated. The Governor had been living on the fiction that he was the executive head of the State. It took Clifford W. Stanton just three minutes to disabuse him completely and forever of this illusion. He explained to him just why he was Governor and by whose permission. Also he pointed out that the permission of the great railroad system that covered the State would again be necessary in order that Governor Foster might succeed himself. Then the great man sent Wilbur Foster back to Albany to order out the nearest regiment of the National Guard for service in the hills.

Before the second night three companies of the militia had passed through Utica and had gone up the line of the U. & M. Their orders were to avoid killing where possible and to capture all of the hill men that they could. The railroad wished to have them tried and imprisoned by the impartial law of the land. For it was characteristic of the great power which in those days ruled the State that when it had outraged every sense of fair play and common humanity to attain its ends it was then ready to spend much money creating public opinion in favour of itself.

Jeffrey Whiting stood in the evening in the cover of the woods above Milton's Crossing and watched a train load of soldiers on flat cars come creeping up the grade from the south. This was the last of the hills. He had refused to let his men go farther. Behind him lay fifty miles of new railroad in ruins. Before him lay the open, settled country. His men, once the fever of destruction had begun to run in their blood, had wished to sweep on down into the villages and carry their work through them. But he had stood firm. This was their own country where they belonged and where the railroad was the interloper. Here they were at home. Here there was a certain measure of safety for them even in the destructive and lawless work that they had begun. They had done enough. They had pushed the railroad back to the edge of the hills. They had roused the men of the hills behind them. Where he had started with his seventy-two friends, there were now three hundred well-armed men in the woods around him. Here in their cover they could hold the line of the railroad indefinitely against almost any force that might be sent against them.

But the inevitable sobering sense of leadership and responsibility was already at work upon him. The burning, rankling anger that had driven him onward so that he had carried everything and everybody near him into this business of destruction was now dulled down to a slow, dull hate that while it had lost nothing of its bitterness yet gave him time to think. Those men coming up there on the cars were not professional soldiers, paid to fight wherever there was fighting to be done. Neither did they care anything for the railroad that they should come up here to fight for it. Why did they come?

They had joined their organisation for various reasons that usually had very little to do with fighting. They were clerks and office men, for the most part, from the villages and factories of the central part of the State. The militia companies had attracted them because the armouries in the towns had social advantages to offer, because uniforms and parade appeal to all boys, because they were sons of veterans and the military tradition was strong in them. Jeffrey Whiting's strong natural sense told him the substance of these things. He could not regard these boys as deadly enemies to be shot down without mercy or warning. They had taken their arms at a word of command and had come up here to uphold the arm of the State. If the railroad was able to control the politics of the State and so was able to send these boys up here on its own business, then other people were to blame for the situation. Certainly these boys, coming up here to do nothing but what their duty to the State compelled them to do; they were not to be blamed.

His men were now urging him to withdraw a little distance into the hills to where the bed of the road ran through a defile between two hills. The soldiers would no doubt advance directly up the line of what had been the railroad, covering the workmen and engineers who would be coming on behind them. If they were allowed to go on up into the defile without warning or opposition they could be shot down by the hill men from almost absolute safety. If he had been dealing with a hated enemy Jeffrey Whiting perhaps could have agreed to that. But to shoot down from ambush these boys, who had come up here many of them probably thinking they were coming to a sort of picnic or outing in the September woods, was a thing which he could not contemplate. Before he would attack them these boys must know just what they were to expect.

He saw them leave the cars at the end of the broken line and take up their march in a rough column of fours along the roadbed. He was surprised and puzzled. He had expected them to work along the line only as fast as the men repaired the rails behind them. He had not thought that they would go away from their cars.